Skip to main content
Preserve

Cream Pies

A pie with a sweet batter baked in a crust, topped with a thickened milk and flour cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cream Pies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cake layer

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix 2 cups of sugar, 2 cups of flour, 6 eggs, cream of tartar, and baking soda dissolved in boiling water.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake until golden.

Make the cream

  1. For the cream, combine 1 quart of milk, 3 cups of flour, ½ cup of sugar, and 2 egg yolks in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thickened.

  3. Allow the pies to cool completely before adding the cream.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide structure and lift to the batter as they set during baking.
Flour
Forms the structure of the batter and thickens the cream as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens both the batter and the cream and adds tenderness to the crumb.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream as they set with heat and add richness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream, which thickens when heated.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the batter rise.

The step that matters

Cooking the cream until thickened. The cream must be stirred constantly over medium heat so the flour and egg yolks thicken evenly without scorching or lumps. Eggs set at higher temperatures, so the mixture can curdle if it boils too hard or sits unattended.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes